


How to Hurt Without Bruising

by WatchMyFavesSuffer



Category: A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Genre: Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, One Shot, canon-typical warnings apply, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23405107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchMyFavesSuffer/pseuds/WatchMyFavesSuffer
Summary: Notes on Starvation, from the life of Jude St Francis, in 4 parts.
Relationships: (sort of) - Relationship, Willem Ragnarsson/Jude St. Francis
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	How to Hurt Without Bruising

**Author's Note:**

> CW for anorexia, non-explicit mentions of CSA and other abuse, passing mentions of drugs and self harm, and general depression. Nothing worse or more of a bummer than the actual canon (that would be hard to accomplish lol.) This is just a tiny ficlet, but if people show interest I might turn it into a full, multichapter work.

i. The thing about being  ~~ a victim of child  ~~ ~~trafficking~~ ~~a~~ ~~ prostitute ~~ ~~ a scared child crying silently into a mattress ~~ in Jude’s line of work is that wanting to hurt yourself is understandable. Acceptable, even. Brother Luke never blamed him for how the hurt built up and built up until nothing but brick wall and a whole lot of velocity could break it down. But what isn’t acceptable is marking up the merchandise. That was why Brother Luke taught him to cut, after all. Fewer unsightly bruises. 

And the thing about being ~~ a trafficker ~~ ~~ a pedophile ~~ ~~ the only father Jude has ever known  ~~ in charge of someone like Jude is that wanting to hurt him is understandable too. Jude didn’t always listen, or didn’t always perform the way the men wanted. (“You can’t just  _ lay _ there. They need to see that you’re enjoying it, Jude. Jude? Jude, baby, are you listening to me?”) But Brother Luke doesn’t hit. Not only because he’s constrained by the need to keep the merchandise clean, but because Brother Luke saw himself as a lover of children, a protector, a mentor. As far as Jude knew, it never occurred to Brother Luke that he had anything in common with the men he took money from each night.

At the end of the day, cutting could only be tolerated up to a point— enough scars and Brother Luke would be just as upset. The need for a silent, invisible pain built until a solution appeared: hunger. The pain caused by starvation scratched that itch, that wild spark that demanded suffering and carnage to externalize everything ugly he had stewing inside. And, even better, he was so lightheaded and fuzzy sometimes that he was’t tethered to his bed, his body, the men that came and took and went on their way again. And Brother Luke liked it too, at first— the clients liked him small, after all. 

ii. After Brother Luke, Jude was able to go long stretches without starving himself. Occasionally— at the group home, or in college—when he was so out of place, or so burdensome that he felt he was begging to be hurt, he would stop eating for a few days just to feel that haziness wash over him again, to take him away from his body and into a blank, dizzy void where nothing could hurt him. Or to feel small and fragile enough that  ~~ there was no meat for the snarling, feral dogs of his memory to feast upon ~~ he didn’t get in anyone’s way. But eventually, the need to starve abated somewhat. He had classes that required focus, and friends that grounded him, and he could cut as much as he wanted because no one would ever, ever see him naked again. 

iii. Andy always got on Jude’s case about  ~~ everything ~~ his weight. Jude never got up to the “healthy” weight range for more than a few months in his adult life. 

In large part, food had never provided Jude pleasure. That neural pathway just never formed, he guessed. At the monastery, feeding Jude was barely tolerated as a necessary expense and use of time away from chores and schoolwork, and it was frequently withheld as punishment. He was often too depressed to have much of an appetite anyway. But Jude’s most deeply-rooted distaste for food was feeling like he never  earned it. Jude liked to feel he was a producer, not a consumer. He wanted to give more than he took, and work provided him genuine happiness—or, at least, a temporary feeling of usefulness that steadied him. What was useful about  _ eating _ ? It didn’t serve anyone but him, so how could it possibly be enjoyable?

On some level, he knew that being so underweight was unattractive, and made him look even more ~~disabled~~ ~~weak~~ sickly than he was already doomed to look. And that was almost enough to get him to try to gain weight. Willem, who was one of the most beautiful people Jude had ever seen, was broad and lightly muscled, and looked so _healthy_ and full of life. Shouldn’t Jude want to look like that? Part of him said that wanting that, to be attractive or healthy or able, was too good for people like him. How presumptuous, to think he could have those things anyway, or that he deserved them. So why try? Why bother?

And, if it kept people from wanting to touch him, wasn’t that all the better?

iv.After JB got clean, at the opening of the “Narcissist’s Guide to Self-Hatred” gallery, he had made a quip about how unfair it wasthat meth hadn’t made him skinny. It was just a  _ joke _ , of course— JB was always joking, casting a net over people and drawing them in with his charisma and his humor. But Jude had known him long enough to know the slight twitch of his jaw, the subtle diffeence in his gleaming eyes, when a joke concealed real pain. 

Jude had never thought much about how other people conceived of their bodies. Everyone else’s body seemed so preferable to his, so much stronger and more whole and more attractive, that he couldn’t imagine that anyone else would hate their body. But the trace of venom in JB’s voice as he talked about himself sparked recognition in him. Jude’s eyes had flickered from the self-portrait in front of him— JB as an absurd, minstrelesque caricature, lazy and fat-lipped— to the barely-concealed hurt in his friend’s eyes and he  understood . He might have never felt what is was like to be fat, or black, or visibly gay, but he knew that  _ feeling _ . The way the body sometimes feels like it had encroached past its borders, that it was unruly and untrustworthy, defiantly refusing to look or act in the way that others would accept or applaud. 

As much as JB hurt him (read: eviscerated him, confirmed many of his worst fears, added the exaggerated, pathetic _“I’m Jude, I’m Jude Saint Francis”_ in that  ~~ gimpy ~~ broken voice to his already loud-enough internal monologue of disgust and hatred) when he was using, Jude had sympathy for him. Wasn’t Jude, in his own,  ~~ slightly ~~ more socially acceptable way, a junkie? 

When Jude starved himself for the last time (The capital-S Starvation, that started with glimpses of Willem and ended with being surveilled and force-fed like a small, recalcitrant child) he became every bit as harsh, as desperate for his fix and vicious to anyone who would get in his way, as JB had ever been. He felt like a starved lion at the zoo, bruised and bloodthirsty and vaguely unclean, ribs flaring beneath the skin, blood dripping from his maw. He would snap at Harold, at Andy. He would see the tears well up in his adopted parents’ eyes and willfully turn his heart off, lock it in a little steel cage and refuse to feel any empathy. He was sitting on a polished bone throne, high above everyone else, cold and haughty and dangerous. 


End file.
